Customer Reviews

The Encyclopedia of Trains and Locomotives: The Comprehensive Guide to Over 900 Steam, Diesel, and Electric Locomotives from 1825 to the Present Day

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The book is a fair to good encyclopedia of trains. It has a large number of foreign engines. Most of the photos are taken from the front and one side and not in profile. The Little Joe appears to be a A-unit but is in fact an A-unit on both ends. The pictures are not very large. Profile drawings would be a good addition.

It is not complete for North America and leaves out many novel, limited production engines like the S-1 Turbine and General Motors Aerotrain.

Some specifications are not available like engine length on many engines. Engine length and height are useful when determining whether a model is scale or not.

It is a good book but did not meet all my expectations and I am still searching for a more comprehensive guide to mainly North American locomotives.

I am a train fanatic and I know a good reference book when I see one, and this book is one of the best I've ever seen. I have refered to this book at least fifty times at the railroad (whose name is undisclosed) that I work as a volunteer at. Simply an amazingly informitive book that I would recomend to any train fan of almost any age.

Please be aware this is what is called "a coffee table book" that aims towards a more general audience than the railway enthusiast (a truly comprehensive encyclopedia on world locomotives would necessarily require several volumes). However, it does present a more or less general survey of locomotives and multiple units that have been or are in service. What gives this work value are the proflies of the more obscure European and Asian trains/locomotive types, which will be of interest to the less parochial railway enthusiast with international tastes. That said, there are numerous errors. Examples- 1. An entry on China's SY class steam locomotive with a nonsensical reference to the African metre gauge 2. Misplaced pictures- a picture of an electric locomotive in an entry about a diesel locomotive, and vice versa. 3. Missing entries, such as a clearly standard gauge locomotive (complete with picture on a track!) being listed as "Gauge: unknown" 4. And just plain inaccuracy- an entry on the Japanese National Railways Class 165 EMU has it described as built for local or suburban traffic, when in fact it was an express type, and the picture included is of a different Class 113 EMU. I think these most of these errors are a result of poor or indifferent editing-maybe the chief editor was "out to sea", so to speak, perhaps editing his "The Encyclopedia Of Ships" mentioned on the back flap(!) Also, as the contributors are all either British or American, information is more trustworthy about types in those areas, less so outside of the anglophone sphere. Furthermore, there are better references available for those seeking information on British or American types.
In short, if you can get a good used copy, or find one at your local library, this book can be mildly informative, if used with considerable caution given its inaccuracies.

The authors are British and the work is heavily focused on British and Commowealth locomotives. Fairly ignores a myriad of interesting and innovative German locomotives.

I bought this book for my dad. He was a great history buff when it came to trains and planes.
He learned a few new things about trains. The book is well illustrated and gives a lot of history for those people that collect train memorabilia